Hadley's V-One Vodka named one of six Double Gold Medal winners

Photo by Dave Roback / The RepublicanV One vodka won a San Francisco Spirits Competition 2010 Double Gold.

HADLEY - The Pioneer Valley's V-One Vodka is the toast of the liquor world, having been named one of six Double Gold Medal winners at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition besting entries from industry stalwarts Belvedere and Stolchinaya.

"I'm getting e-mails from China with people wanting to import more luxury-quality vodkas to that country," V-One's creator and owner, Paul J. Kozub, said on Monday. "This is going to vault us to the next level."

His company Web site went from getting about 2,000 hits a day to 4,000 and counting by Monday afternoon. Results of the competition were announced late last week.

V-One was one of six vodkas to earn the Double Gold Medal. Vodka, which accounts for 25 percent of the world's spirits market, is the most competitive category at the show, according to Kozub, a Wilbraham native who now lives and works in Hadley.

"I look at each bottle of V-One as my child. I nurtured it," he said.

Kozub, 35, created V-One in his basement, inspired by his Polish heritage, his entrepreneur father and his grandfather's tales of moonshining in Chicopee during prohibition. He founded the company five years ago.

"The first year-and-a-half it was literally me and a van making deliveries," Kozub said.

Some of the spelt, a variety of wheat, used in V-One is grown in Hadley, but Kozub has the vodka distilled in Poland. He owns the name and the recipe.

With six employees, Kozub sells about 3,000 cases of Vodka a year now in Massachusetts and parts of Connecticut.

Kozub and his staff still do all the sales, marketing and distributing work themselves. He wants to grow by pushing harder into the Boston market and expanding into other states. But, each state has its own set of laws and licensing when it comes to spirits, making it difficult to expand on his own.

Kozub has been reluctant to take on investors for fear of giving up too much control in his company, but he's also now being courted with more offers from potential investors. He also said he's been wary of signing deals with distributors that might be more interested in keeping his brand in the shadows and, instead, push a national brand with more muscle behind it.

"This award gives us some leverage," Kozub said.

The 2010 San Francisco World Spirits Competition was the largest contest in the event's 10-year history. V-One went up against 1,024 spirits, including 200 vodkas.

Thirty judges sample each of the liquors in a blind taste test, according to Kozub. Unlike wine tastings, they had to swallow each sample.

"In vodkas its all about the finish," Kozub said. "A clean finish is the sign of a high-quality vodka."